History buff helps uncover forgotten section of historic road

A Palm Coast man who has spent years uncovering a forgotten portion of a centuries-old road bed in Flagler County is determined to make it accessible for all to enjoy.

JULIE MURPHYSTAFF WRITER

PALM COAST — A Palm Coast man who has spent years uncovering a forgotten portion of a centuries-old road bed in Flagler County is determined to make it accessible for all to enjoy.It was three years ago that Jim Massfeller attended a lecture at the Ormond Beach Historical Society given by Bill Ryan, who also lives in Palm Coast, about The King's Road, parts of which were first established in the 1700s as a Seminole Indian cow path connecting Georgia to what is now Southeast Volusia County."I spoke with (Ryan) after the meeting, and he told me there was a lost section of the road west of the (Florida Agricultural Museum) and U.S. 1," Massfeller said. "I'm a volunteer at the Ag Museum, so I got a four-wheeler so I could explore."Ryan, who has written extensively about local history, including Old Kings Road, as it is now called, refers to Massfeller as "the heart" of efforts to preserve this portion of the historic road."Jim, reading all this (about the roadway), said, 'Hey, let's rebuild all this,' " Ryan said. The property west of U.S. 1 belongs to the St. Johns River Water Management District but the Florida Agricultural Museum has a special-use agreement for some of the land, Massfeller said.Massfeller, 68, took two old surveys of King's Road, one from 1834 and a second from 1850, and laid them over a "Google Earth" view to give him a starting point. It also gave him an approximate location for Fort Fulton, an abandoned U.S. Army outpost built in the early 1800s.He and his brother Tom, 65 — a fellow history buff and member of the Ormond Beach Historical Society — hopped on his Kawasaki and set out to find the lost roadway, crossing U.S. 1 and continuing west onto Ranch House Grade Road. "We were able to follow the trace of the road because of the features of it. We found the (south) causeway the first day," Massfeller said. "We were looking for the slope and the downward curvature of the road."Massfeller started to clear brush and trees with help from his brother. He then enlisted help from Flagler County, the city of Palm Coast, the Water Management District and the Agricultural Museum to re-establish the portion that runs from Ranch House Grade to the "south causeway," one of three swamp crossings. The center causeway covers the area between the north and south branches of Pellicer Creek. The north causeway is on private property in St. Johns County."The search continues for the 1850 route but no traces of it have yet been found," Massfeller wrote in documentation emblazoned on a newly constructed sign that marks the entrance to the found roadway. "It is well known that The King's Road moved around over time. This could have been due to storms, fallen trees or washouts. Nobody really knows why or when it moved."

HISTORY OF KINGS ROAD

Massfeller, who refers to himself as a "self-certified historian," said the project has given him an opportunity to disprove a lot of common misconceptions about the road that once extended from south Georgia to New Smyrna Beach and was a primary route for north-south travel more than 200 years ago."I've run into all the things that everyone knew or believed to be true," Massfeller said, maneuvering his four-wheeler over a roadbed that was cleared by Flagler County's public works department. Massfeller explained how colonial roads were built, pointing to an area that most might call a ditch."The first thing is that it's low (within higher, non-swampy land) and the second thing is that there is a pile of dirt on each side," he said. One misconception, Massfeller said, is that an old logging road — a straight-line route running north and south that is still visible in current aerial photography — was part of the roadway in 1834, though it actually runs slightly to the west. A portion of the roadway was shifted east by 1850.Other local historians, such as Flagler County Attorney Al Hadeed, corroborate Massfeller's findings. "Probably one of the most interesting facts is that the longest alignment of the original King's Road is intact," Hadeed said. "It changed very little in Flagler County."Through St. Johns County, King's Road was "a straight line," Hadeed said. "The plantations were south of St. Augustine, and they had to ship goods. British engineers built it straight to Flagler County, but its name then was the Matanzas Swamp," he said.In 1763, the treaty of Paris transferred Florida from Spain to England, and about 10 years later Acting Governor John Moultrie paid 150 pounds for the road to be built from Pellicer Creek to the Indian River. An Indian known as Grey Eyes blazed a trail through Flagler County following ridgelines and avoiding swampy areas, Massfeller said. "That's why it curves through Flagler County," Hadeed confirmed.

WHAT THE FUTURE HOLDS

The roadway was 16 feet wide and "paved" with crushed shell. Now that the found portion is accessible and clear, the goal is to restore King's Road as it would have been in the 1700s, Massfeller said. There is now a sign marking the spot where the historic roadway meets Ranch House Grade Road, slightly to the west of the entrance to the Hewitt Sawmill. Ultimately, and "although there is no money for it," Massfeller would like to see an overpass horse crossing built so hikers, bikers and horseback riders could ride from the western portion of the ag museum property across U.S. 1 to the sawmill and King's Road. "We could have a trail system that would take you from the Intracoastal Waterway to the railroad tracks," he said. "That would be ideal." Besides finding the roadway, Massfeller believes he has found the site of Fort Fulton. He said the fort would have been a standard U.S. Army log fort common in the Seminole Indian War era of the early 1800s. Over the winter months, he hopes to survey the area with ground-penetrating radar to pinpoint the location and size of the fort.As with the roadway, he would like to reconstruct the fort to become a historic park."This is such an important area," Massfeller said. "There is so much potential here and I believe it will one day be developed."